June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Zynga Inc., a San Francisco-based
maker of social games, is hiring more engineers in China as a
partnership with the nation’s biggest microblogging service
operator allows it to gain smartphone users.

“Mobile is fast growing globally for us,” Andy Tian,
general manager at Zynga China, said in a phone interview
yesterday. Zynga has more than 100 employees in Beijing, he
said, declining to disclose how many the company plans to add.

Zynga has been adding games for use on smartphones and
tablets as users shift away from playing on personal computers.
The gamemaker last week introduced its “Draw Something” mobile
game for Sina Corp.’s Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging
service in China with more than 300 million registered users.

More users now access Sina’s Weibo service on mobile
devices than on PCs, Charles Chao, chief executive officer at
the Shanghai-based company, said in February.

Apple Inc. last week said it will offer increased access to
Chinese Internet services including Sina Weibo in the next
upgrade of the software that runs its iPhone smartphone and iPad
tablet.

Zynga fell 1.3 percent to $5.89 in New York trading
yesterday, taking its loss for the year to 37 percent.

Daily active use for Zynga social games fell 8.2 percent in
May, Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co. in San Francisco,
said in a June 12 report.

The U.S. company gets most of its revenue from games played
by users of Facebook Inc.’s social network, which is restricted
in China.